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16 Jan 2017 11:27 #242476 by Shellhead
Had a chunk of unexpected free time yesterday and didn't feel like setting up a boardgame. So I played a game of Armageddon Empires for old times' sake. Since I was playing on my new/used computer with migrated data, I couldn't find any saved decks, so I just played the starter deck for Empire of Man, vs AI opponents for the Machine Empire, the Free Mutants, and the Xenos. For laughs, I also enabled the expansion, to get a random fourth opponent. I went with mid-level deck points and mid-sized map, with uncommon special resources.

I got a very lucky start, with 3 decent scouts showing up early. I scouted the hell out of nearly half the map, scooping up a couple of nifty weapons and some caches of resource points. I also located the homebase of the Xenos just one turn after a dustup with one of their scouts. A few turns later, I sent a mech over to stomp the Xeno base, which was very lightly defended. Mostly I was just stomping eggs. Their one decent stack of troops took up passive residence in an abandoned town nearby, since they couldn't get home fast enough to re-take their base. One down.

Then I started losing my scouts, eventually all of three of them, to encounters with a mysterious Fist of the Wastelands or somesuch, near the center of the map. They were tough infantry in powered armor, with chain guns, shock attacks, and a few tactical nukes. The shock effect is nasty, because a single hit causes the target unit to lose their attack for that round of battle. Even my mech got swarmed at one point, and had to retreat after three consecutive rounds lost to shock.

I suspected that I wasn't seeing any mutants or robots because they were fighting it out on the far side of the map. Eventually, some allies that I recruited got strafed a few times by flying bots, so I went actively looking for the Machine Empire. By this time, I had two mechs out, one of which was commanded by Vladimir something or other, a very aggressive military leader. Vlad's mech ran into more Fist guys, and they kept pursuing him when he retreated. My other mech found the Machine HQ and took after a series of moderately challenging fights with defending forces. Two down.

By this point, I ruled half the map, and I had located the Fist base. I harassed them with air strikes until I got a third mech up. That, plus a couple of nasty tanks combined into a serious army with my other two mechs. Though I nearly lost a mech, I completely stomped out the Fists. Three down, but the dying leader of the Fists did set off a nuke that seriously wounded all of my units in that fight, and killed Vladimir.

While repairing my mechs, my spy located the homebase of the Free Mutants. From the Fist HQ, it was a fairly short march for my mech squad. They made neat work of cleansing the mutant base, for the win.

The expansion material is nice, because it adds a random and initially secret opponent to the mix. Otherwise, I feel like AE is practically a solved game. Scout early and often. Retreat early from a losing battle, so your opponent at least wastes action points to finish your troops off. Buy the biggest units you can get and combine them into a vicious army. Take enemy bases whenever possible, to extend your supply range and also the range of your air strikes.

Even so, I highly recommend Armageddon Empires. It is a true 4x game with the fog of war and a neat setting. Although the main strategy seems straightforward, there are a lot of interesting angles to explore, like R&D, tactics, diplomacy with minor factions, espionage, assassination, and sabotage. You can play any of the four main factions, and each has distinct advantages and disadvantages. The worst that I can say about AE is that the combat could be streamlined a bit to cut down on mouseclicks, and there should have been an option to play live opponents.
The following user(s) said Thank You: jeb, Gary Sax, ChristopherMD, SebastianBludd, hotseatgames, DukeofChutney, Vlad

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16 Jan 2017 12:10 - 16 Jan 2017 12:25 #242482 by Gary Sax
I'm playing Stellaris again. It's not... it's not a good game for a competitive player, I feel like, but is a perfect game for me. I suspect I feel about it the same way Legomancer feels about No Man's Sky whenever he talks about it. I love Stellaris---there are many long periods where are you just choosing between different types of busy work to spend on first, exploring, reading event texts, etc but with just enough choices that it really tickles me. I even play it on normal speed, which is pretty slow, at all times with long periods of staring at the map. Very relaxing. I think the systems are still very cool in the game, (e.g. pops, other race POPs, changing citizen attitudes, deep tech tree) but they don't quite create enough friction in any of the games I've played to worry about beyond the international (interstellar) relations choices of outmaneuvering enemy empires and staying strong to combat enemy aggressors. There's also an RPG element to a certain extent---I generally start with a certain ethos in mind (current one is Trek federation-ish space snails) and then pick traits and attitudes to go with that. From there, I just act that way, and USUALLY the simulation supports my decisions by giving me Trek-ish options/advantages. So right now I just opened my borders to these fast breeding squid people I have a defense pact with and they're flooding my planets and cities... over time they're slowly changing their attitudes to reflect my people's.

It's a bit of shame because after 2-3 games you're seeing the same event chains. It's kind of unavoidable because it's SUCH a long involved game it's kind of a giant corpus of fiction even to create enough event chains to supply 1-2 games. The only way you could really create enough events to maintain the wonder, I think, is some sort of crowdsourcing/modding.
Last edit: 16 Jan 2017 12:25 by Gary Sax.

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16 Jan 2017 12:46 #242488 by hotseatgames
I remember playing Armageddon Empires a LONG time ago... that was a cool game. I think it was still in beta when I played it.
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16 Jan 2017 12:53 #242489 by Vlad
Armageddon Empires is very cool indeed, thanks for reminding about it. I think it was one of the first games that did the board-video games fusion that's becoming increasingly popular. If only it was on tablets and had multiplayer. The AI is very competent, but still just a toaster. I'd love to play it with a human being.
Actually, the follow-up, Solium Infernum was focused on multiplayer, intrigue and diplomacy. But sadly it is PBeM only, which is completely ridiculous (the game is only 4-5 years old, but feel like 20). Did anyone here play it?

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16 Jan 2017 13:28 #242493 by Gary Sax
Solium Infernum is wild.

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16 Jan 2017 15:49 - 16 Jan 2017 15:51 #242502 by Jexik

SebastianBludd wrote: Since I'm pseudo-Iron Manning the game my last save was back in the base so instead of starting the Alien Base Assault again I just goofed around for a bit and did some research and a few missions without saving.


I wish there were a single word to describe dying-after-not-saving-for-a-long-time-and-then-not-wanting-to-play-the-game-anymore. This used to really ruin JRPGs for me back in the SNES/SEGA days. I think I died in a random battle in a vehicle in Phantasy Star IV after I just got the vehicle and beat a difficult dungeon. I was set back like 4 hours and never played the game again.

Nowadays everything is on autosave.

I've been playing a lot of Faster Than Light. I've got about half of the ships unlocked, and I've been a chump playing on Easy most of the times. I don't really care about my score in this yet. It's pretty great. The first time that I actually completed it was with my nephew's guidance, who has played it an awful lot.
Last edit: 16 Jan 2017 15:51 by Jexik.

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16 Jan 2017 17:46 #242509 by boothwah

Jexik wrote:

SebastianBludd wrote: Since I'm pseudo-Iron Manning the game my last save was back in the base so instead of starting the Alien Base Assault again I just goofed around for a bit and did some research and a few missions without saving.


I wish there were a single word to describe dying-after-not-saving-for-a-long-time-and-then-not-wanting-to-play-the-game-anymore.


There is :



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16 Jan 2017 20:22 - 16 Jan 2017 20:24 #242516 by Jexik
I also used to stop right before the last boss and let it sit for a couple weeks to a month just because i didn't want it to be over.

An F-bomb doesn't quite do it justice though. It's this weird deja vu waste of time feeling, like 10x worse than reading the same chapter in an okay novel again. Then not too long after Blizzard discovered that all you had to do was give people random loot and they'd want to do the same thing over and over.
Last edit: 16 Jan 2017 20:24 by Jexik.

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16 Jan 2017 22:17 #242520 by Black Barney
Moments like that prepare you disturbingly well for the work environment.
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27 Jan 2017 02:49 - 27 Jan 2017 02:50 #243117 by lj1983
well, we had our *late* Christmas party for my crew this past sunday, and they got me a Gift card for $250.

My son's birthday is coming up, so I'm going to get him Mario Maker, which he's been obsessed with. Mostly I'm buying a wii U for the family to go with it. getting Smash Bros, Mario Kart, Nintendoland, Mario 3d World to go with it and Mario maker. The kids enjoy playing games on the XB1 with me, but probably will enjoy the Nintendo stable of characters better than Master Chief and Co. Most of the speculation I've seen expects wii u prices to stay mostly the same after the switch drops, so I'm not to worried about missing out, plus it has to make it for birthday time.
Last edit: 27 Jan 2017 02:50 by lj1983.

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